To the Dark Tower

by Francis King

  On the table of her room in London stood a shaving mirror in a mahogany frame. It had belonged to her father; it magnified. She looked into it now with suppressed disgust. It showed each pore of her skin, distended, rough, like a loosely woven fabric; it showed distinct hairs, on chin and upper-lip, blemishes on the nose, scarlet filaments round the bulging eye-balls; there were particles of scurf where her hair was brushed away from her forehead. For a long time she stared at this caricature, glumly, her chin oh her hands; she stared into her own eyes, flecked with light, blue and green like oysters; she stared at the inflamed lids, which seemed to have been skinned, so raw were they. She had not slept for three nights.

  Then she took up a pen. Thinking: This is the last letter I shall ever write. This is the last time I shall sit here, before this mirror. The end. Words formed in her mind, confused, haphazard, a torrent of words: she had never composed with such facility, nor such carelessness. As she wrote she turned the mirror face downwards, obliterating the pop-eyed gargoyle. It was easier when one was not looking at it.

  MY DEAREST,—For the last time I write to you, for the very last time. By the time you get this letter, I shall be dead. One has read that last sentence so often before—in novels, in films, in newspaper reports; one does not expect that one shall ever write it oneself. But now death seems the only conclusion possible. All that should have happened, has happened. Anything more would be superfluous.

  I read somewhere that all or nearly all suicides are caused by the wish for revenge. ‘You’ll care now. This’ll teach you.’ You must not think that I have any such thoughts. There is no anger in my heart, no bitterness. I simply feel that I have accomplished all that I was sent into the world to accomplish. And now there is nothing more.

  I doubt if I can ever explain this to you. I do not understand myself, completely. But I am certain that all my life before was nothing more than a preparation for those three days I spent with you. Why? I simply do not know; perhaps you will, one day. This was my act of service to you. Service—I am convinced of that. Those three days were a crisis for you as well as for me. More I do not know. But of that I am certain. And now my part is over.

  To do what one was destined to—there is nothing more that one can ask for. That is enough. Our lives momentarily converged. In some way—I do not know how—I have been of help to you. It is sufficient. I think I am happy now, and at peace. That terrible inner restlessness—you have freed me from it.

  I have no thoughts of the future. I do not know what will become of you. I still see you as a superman, the embodiment of my own and perhaps this country’s destiny. I still believe you can do so much, if you will only awake to your power.

  I am not afraid to die. In a sense, I feel that I am dying for you. In some way, I feel that this too is necessary.

  Now and at all moments—now and at the hour of death—I am yours, yours only.

  SHIRLEY.

  She pushed the sheets into an envelope and licked the flap with a greyish tongue. The pen seemed to scratch intolerably as she wrote the address in careful flourishes. Then for a while she sat motionless, looking outwards at the plane trees, the little square, the blotchy façade opposite. Suddenly it seemed to her bitter and terrible that she should never see these things again. If it had been raining or there had been a fog perhaps she would have been able to leave them without regret. But the spring sunshine was sad and autumnal as it flowed over the window-sill; it was lax with memories. She wanted to sit in it, doing nothing, while far below people made random furrows of shadows on the gleaming pavements, and a dog sniffed a lamp-post, and a barrel-organ tinkled in the distance.

  Oh, no. She must be resolute. She put on her coat with its fur collar that stuck out in drab tufts, and then her hat, and last of all some green woollen gloves embroidered with eidelweiss. But before she left the room she went on an impulse to the head of her bed. Taking from the wall the framed photograph of her father she smashed it downwards on the brass bedpost. Then, from the splintered glass, she extricated his image and put it in her pocket.

  As she walked downstairs she fingered it all the time.

  From a letter:

  MY DEAR GENERAL,—I am sending you this typescript of the novel. I have called it To the Dark Tower. This is the third draft. But it still is not you...FRANK CAULDWELL.

  Copyright

  First published in 1946 by Home & Van Thal

  This edition published 2013 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-5822-3 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-5819-3 POD

  Copyright © Francis King, 1946

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